What is faith?
What does God expect us to do for other cultures and faiths?
God sends missionaries all over the world to the uncivilized and cannibalistic people. He wants them to evangelize as many people who does not know the existence of God and convert them. As a Christian, I should also try to get together with God in spirit and with the words, spread God's word to other people. It would be great if i could convert one person into christianity, just like mr. Don Richardson converted many sawi people.
How does Faith relate to the world in which we live?
Faith is something that people have on their belief. In this world has many countries and each countries hold different kinds of world views and beliefs. The people have faith in their religion. Even small tribes of cannibals have their belief and traditions or culture. The faith relate to the world we live in because every people have their beliefs about something.
What should we do when we are confronted with other cultures?
First, we should observe the culture of people and respect it. The countries' or tribes culture is very precious and important for those people who respect the culture. Don Richardson first observed the culture of the Sawi and gradually, after the problems and conflict happened , he slowly taught some of the Sawi's culture and traditions were wrong, like giving the Peace CHild, and as he introduced the story of Jesus and his sacrifice to save all people from sin. So if i were a missionary, i would first listen and observe if the culture of one's belief is good or bad, and fix some of the traditions by introducing the christianity.
What should we do?
What should society do for "uncivilized cultures" like the sawi?
Since the world is growing and technology is advancing, the uncivilized tribes should also get a new life and meet new ages to survive. Missionaries are there to fix the tribes' belief into christianity and teach the uncivilized societies how to live in comfort. Therefore people all over the world could support the uncivilized groups by donating money to the organization who supports the native tribes.
What does Jesus want us to do for the sawi?
As I probably mentioned before, Jesus wants his followers, any christians, missionaries, or etc to evangelize the word of God because Jesus loves everybody. All humans are equal therefore even uncivilized sawi got the chance to be converted.
What do mission organisations do for these people?
Mission organisations basically help the poor or uncivilized cultural tribes. No matter how hard or will take long to understand the tribes' language and speak them, missionaries hang around with the tribes in a small cottage and heal the sick, give advice to the people who had done bad crimes, and gather groups of people to share a gospel.
Who or what is Peace Child to me?
How different is your modern culture from the sawi tenents?
The culture of mine or my country is very different from the old sawi tenents. In the sawi tenents, there are some rules that are so barbaric. They had such law like practicing cannibalism, using the waness bind on people, and gross custom of touching dead family member's corpses called gefam ason. Overall, the sawi tenents usually include cruel and merciless laws, however in our modern cultures, there are no cannibalism or no touching corpses. There could be something similar to the waness bind like setting traps on one person to order them to do what benefits the user of the waness bind. One of the basic difference of my country's culture or other countries like china, america, japan, or etc is that there is no polygamy going on. THe sawi had several wives and most of them were from killing their old husbands and winning them over. The polygamy was one of the practice that probably happened in every countries' ancient century, however the world is now so civilized that only monogamy stays in place. The country or tribes who practice polygamy is probably so uncivilized and because they do not know the other world culture outside.
Also the Christian cultures are opposites to the Sawi tenents. Sawi also had a myth about birds and the reptiles which is about mortality vs immortality. Christian believes that God created the world and since the beginning, Adam and Eve had caused Sin to appear so all of us humans became mortal. Sawi at first enjoyed the story of Judas betraying Jesus because the theme about that story included fattening for the friendships, which is a most common way to kill their friends, or precious companions. Because of this theme, sawis cannot trust fully each other. However, Christians believes betraying is the worst thing one can do especially to Jesus.
The last difference and the major one of the old Sawi tenents and Christian culture is that Sawi used the term peace child which is used to make agreement, deal, or peace treaty with other tribes. Peace child are taken care of real sacred to the other tribes because once the peace child is dead, the treaty will be broken. Peace child is given by his or her father and mother. This is sort of similar to God being father and Jesus being his son and Jesus was the 'peace child' to the people in every world. Jesus was a major enormous peace child which forgave people's sin and counted for all the people not just the israelites, all the people in the world. Overall, Peace child in Sawi culture is small and Peace Child in Christian culture is huge.
Must Do Question
Choose a representative passage from this novel that holds particular significence to you. Type it in and comment on its significance.
This passage usually appears in many different phrases in the book. Everything Mr. Don Richardson prays to God comes to an answer. When he was rescuing his family in the crocodile infested river, he prayed to God for his family to be safe and God answered to his prayer and by the time MR. Richardson had rescued his family members, all of them were safe and sound. In this phrase, Don and carol was praying to God and reading the bible to hope for a miracle to Warahai, who suffered almost to death. They prayed for him to rise in feet again and God answered the prayer. The next day Warahai rose from the 'dead' and the miracle thad Don Richardson and Carol hoped, happened.
It seems that God answers his servants prayer very quickly and the servant needs it hurriedly. Whenever Don prayed for an answer, the answer came so soon. My point is that Whenever i pray to God, I hope he answers fast just like he did to Mr. Richardson. Although when i pray, it is not always about the other people, some prayers are mostly about me. Even though it is mostly about me, i still hope that God answers my prayer, only when i am in need of help desperately.
IF you are going to post, focus on one question and comment about it.
5 comments:
about "What should we do?" part....
Then do you believe all uncivilized cultures should be civilized in order to survive? What if their current life is more likely to be necessary for them to live among the surroundings? For example, the Sawi people are living in wide woods so that they have less chance to meet all the tribes near them, and they are always in danger of being attacked by wild animals. Do you think they should live as we are living as civilized people, like thinking about God's words and sleeping in beds, in that circumstances? I want to hear your responds.
Sorry, made a typo on last comment.....
okay, what i think about the sawi tribes i read from Peace Child, is that some people like Hato did not like the culture or traditions of practicing gefam ason or many other things. Gefam ason was one of those cruel practice that allowed kins to touch dead corpse. Also, the trading of Peace Child in old sawi promise is also not appreciated by many sawis but they had to make sacrifice to keep the deal and promises. If you see the parents who give their baby to some strange tribes who could eat their babies or keep them honorable until death, most of them were very miserable like when Hato felt sad when the other tribe ate one of his child.
Also, if the peace child died of sickness or get murdered, the deal ends quickly and another fight between the tribes begin. The promise will never be kept. If the fight continues, eventually one or the other tribes will die out leaving no population. When i mean by changing uncivilized culture, i mean by changing their practices and beliefs. Its not a 'must' need for them to sleep on the bed, or to watch televisions like we do. If the culture and traditions of Sawi still existed, they would still live in this 2007, and still practice canni balism. Then other strong countries could raise army against the sawi and steal their land for some good. It is good that courageous missionary like Don Richardson had come to save them from evilness. It is a must job for missionaries to fix poor people's beliefs. Also, he had civilized them and made some schools for them to educate. A former peace child even became a primary school principal in sawi village!
So my point is that changing culture is needed because wasting human lives in evil world view is not right, everybody has right to be in salvation and those who strongly reject jesus can reject him. But while technology is the most powerful thing thats growing in the world, leaving the uncivilized people in the world would eventually learn that there is something that surpass beyond them. They will have to know about these technologies to prepare for their future that "nobody knows."
I can see that the Sawis liked the change the missionaries brought about in their culture. However, I still disagree with your assertion that we should "fix" their future for them forcibly. We should show them all the options they have, but leave the choice toatally up to them. I think deciding their future for them is too much of an interference. However, I also agree that we should at least educate them and teach them the options they have. I think your assertion is not in agreement with mine because your point of view is mainly that of a Christian.
I think faith was a major part in here. It's very strange how people's views can just change and be wrong. And even though Don Richardson was probably told all his life that life was precious and a person alive cannot be sent to death easily, he had to have faith in God in midst of everything. Sometimes the things we are so sure of, I think they require our faith.
I THINK THE FOCUS SHOULD NOT BE ON "FIXING" CULTURE BUT RATHER ON CHRIST WHO "FIXES" OUR SIN. THE SAWI AND US MAY HAVE DIFFERENT CULTURES BUT WE ARE ALL SINFUL - THIS IS WHAT CHRISTIANITY DOES - IT CHANGES MAN'S SINFUL NATURE, SO THAT WHEN A CULTURE HAS IN IN ITS TENANT GOD WILL INTERVENE AND CONVICT THOSE WHO ACCEPT HIM. MRS.MC.
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